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From the Contents of Esoteric Classes

Esoteric Lessons Part III: Strassburg, 5-14-'13

EL,
Strassburg, 5-14-'13

Our
meditations should gradually bring it about that we press into higher
worlds body-free and learn to know and see things there. It's not
just a matter of getting into higher worlds but of how we do this
— the attitude with which we enter higher worlds must be a good
and moral one. Now to begin with it's the case that a man as a
sensory-physical being on earth is abandoned by good. He
doesn't feel the moral element, the good that could and should speak
to him out of the whole of creation any more. To give man freedom
Lucifer has as it were pulled the moral element out; a man must
now awaken it in himself, find it again and then bring it back to the
spiritual, divine worlds.

When a man
looks at the sun rising and setting today he doesn't feel any moral
impulses streaming to him from it. If it wasn't for Lucifer he would
feel: forces flow from the sun that pulse through me in such a way
that I know and feel that I'm an I. If a man looks at the moon with
what astronomy gives him he then knows that in the time from new moon
to full moon and back again there are certain equilibrium
constellations, where one first sees a quarter, then a half and then
a whole illumined surface. What a man no longer feels is that if the
constellations were completely different, if the moon would
change its position very slightly beings like men would no longer be
able to live in their physical bodies; for reproductive forces flow
from the moon. If a man stares at Mercury he can no longer see that
without Mercury no connection between sun and moon forces, between
ego and reproductive forces would be made. Likewise with Venus he
does not feel that without its mild light none of the love relations
that make him happy would exist.

Lucifer has
completely permeated man's astral body with egoism. This is necessary
for the sake of a development towards freedom and independence
of the individual. But things should not go so far that a man becomes
insensitive to moral things. However this is the case with
respect to nature, to the elements, for instance. A man would
have to feel from air, fire, water, earth that they're there to
create a punishing adjustment for human sins, that living in
elemental forces there's a sickening force that we should and
must let work on us in order to purify ourselves.-The same
words are true or false depending on whose mouth they come from. In
Lucifer's mouth “nature is sin, spirit is devil” is
mockery. But it's true in the sense developed above, that
material nature is supposed to punish us for our sins and that
we should feel the spirit in nature as something that makes us sick
and brings us suffering. For pains, suffering is the God-given means
to recognize egoism and to overcome it. In Lucifer's mouth the
word “Ye shall be as Gods” is a lie, but understood
correctly it's true. Christ says: “Ye are Gods” —
sons of the Godhead. A man is called upon to become a God. What
does a modern materialist who divides the world into
physical, material atoms want to do? He wants to perpetuate
forces of sin. For matter is condensed injustice. Matter must
dissolve into spirit again through spiritual development. We must
wrest the morality that's placed in nature by divine, world wisdom
from it again. Rosicrucian wisdom saw this whole materialistic
development coming and so it gave means and showed ways to a
heightened morality without which one shouldn't enter higher worlds,
for one's own good. Otherwise one might get in, but then one doesn't
find Lucifer there as he should approach one as a guide in
knowledge of higher worlds, but all the more as a seducer who shows
and simulates all kinds of divine spiritual things to one that don't
really exist.

We should say
Ex Deo nascimur
and look up to the moon with an elevated soul, as to the giver of the
opportunity to incarnate repeatedly and to perfect oneself on earth
in a physical body.
In Christo morimur,
while looking up to the sun in order to feel oneself as an ego-being,
as a spiritual-divine being through Christ, the spirit who is connected
with the sun.
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus,
while looking up to
Mercury and Venus that don't appear in physical copies but become
manifest purely spiritually. Because the power of the spirit
that teaches men about spiritual love is divided between
them and the other planets. Plato still felt as an echo that man is
abandoned by the good, that the good lives withdrawn in the
deep lap of the Gods when he said: God is good. Christ Jesus said: No
one is good except God.

We want to
strive ceaselessly towards higher morality so that we become capable
of feeling moral impulses out of nature, sun, moon, stars and
of bringing the moral element back to the spiritual world, that
was taken out of it by Lucifer for the sake of our freedom.